CINAHL is the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and contains data of the articles from nearly all English nursing journals and a large number of journals about applied health sciences, such as physiotherapy and speech therapy. More information about this database you can find here
In the boxes on this page you will find information about searching in CINAHL:
As a rule, CINAHL searches the entered terms in title, abstract and keywords. You can look up your terms in this way. To search only in title/abstract in CINAHL, you will have to enter search terms twice: there is one search box to search in the title and one to search in the abstract. Behind each search box you can select the field in question (‘TI Title’ or ‘AB Abstract’) from the drop down menu (1). Combine both search strings with OR (2).
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Please note: In each search box you can enter several synonyms, divided by OR. To search for a word group in CINAHL, you use double inverted commas, just like in PubMed (for instance “amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”).
CINAHL subject headings are based on the MeSH headings, with additional specific nursing and allied health headings added as appropriate. Each year, the headings are updated and revised relative to terminology needed in these fields. In addition, new terms from MeSH may be added as well (source).
To search with MeSH terms in CINAHL, you enter the MeSH term(s) in a search box and select ‘MH Exact Subject Heading‘ in the drop down menu.
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Please note: In each search box you can enter several synonyms, divided by OR. To search by a word group in CINAHL you use double inverted commas ( for instance “amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”). Searching by keywords is not case-sensitive.
You can also search yourself for keywords in CINAHL, to do so use the tab ‘CINAHL Headings’
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In the screen ‘Search History’ (1) you can combine searches by ticking the wanted searches (2) and to click on ‘Search with AND’ or ‘Search with OR‘ (3). Complicated searches (for instance (S1 OR S2) AND S3 ) need to be done in several steps.
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